Glancing over Davis’s shoulder, Jordan caught sight of their waiter over by the bar. He glowered in their direction.
“I think we’ve overstayed our welcome,” she said. “We should go.”
Paying the bill, they’d moved outside. Finding a bench in the square, Jordan bathed in the sun, while Davis pulled out his tablet, logged in, and checked his messages. “Good, the images are here. They’re not spy quality, but they should do the job.”
Jordan scooted across the bench to look at the tablet.
“I asked him for everything that was taken in the last eight days within a fifty-mile radius of the crash site.”
“You do realize how many images that is, don’t you?” Jordan asked.
He gave her a look. “It can’t be that many. They throw out the bad ones, the ones with cloud cover or where it’s too dark to see anything. The software also filters out about forty percent because there’s been no change in the photo from the previous shot. He told me the quickest way to find what we’re after is to look through the thumbnails.”
“We’re talking about ten thousand images.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No,” Jordan said. “If it takes a satellite roughly ninety minutes to complete an orbit of the earth, it will shoot about one million photos. Multiply that by eight days.”
Davis whistled. “No wonder there are people whose entire job is analyzing these photos.”
Jordan scanned through the first twenty-five images on the screen and decided if that was her job, she’d go crazy. She got faster as she flipped through the pages, and then something caught her eye. “Check this out.”
She pointed to an image that showed a truck and two SUVs parked in a clearing in the woods to the east of Dykanka. The truck was covered in camo, and it was difficult to see the make or model of any of the vehicles.
“You think it’s our guys?” Davis asked.
“Can you zoom in closer?”
“Like I said, these aren’t spy satellite images. If we accessed those, we’d be in jail. The government restricts the output on these images to fifty centimeters per pixel and requires my source to blur faces.”
“Are the files time and date stamped?” Jordan flipped forward through the screens. “We need to find photos that show the train being loaded at the crash site, those taken in the last three days.”
Davis checked the source code. The images she sought were near the end, and Jordan immediately spotted the anomaly.
“There, that’s it. That’s the car.” She pointed at one in the middle that was longer than the others.
Davis measured the difference in car length with his fingers. “It’s clearly bigger, but is it big enough to hide two or three vehicles and still leave loading space?”
“I think so.” Pulling up Lory’s e-mail address on her phone, she held it up for Davis. “Can you send the photo here? Type ‘imminent threat’ in the subject line.”
After he’d sent the e-mail, she dialed the RSO’s number. “Check your in-box.”
“What am I looking for?”
“An e-mail from Nye Davis. It’s a satellite image of the train in Hoholeve.”
“What the hell are you doing with Davis, Jordan?”
It didn’t take Lory but a second to see what she was seeing. “I’ll be damned!”
“Do we know where that train is now?”
“They finished loading it yesterday. It’s headed for Krakow.”
“Can you find out on what track it was routed? Did it go through Kyiv, or is it still en route somewhere? We need to locate that car.”
Instead of saying he’d call her back, this time Lory put her on hold. He didn’t keep her waiting long.
“Okay, I’ve got people checking. According to the Ukrainians, the train traveled a southern route through L’viv. It crossed the border into Poland last night at Mostyska II, just outside of Przemśl. They’re pulling the camera footage at the border crossing now. If you’re right about the Russians being on that train, we may have a big problem.”
His tone opened a small fissure of fear in her. She looked at Davis, who shrugged. What hadn’t Lory told her? “I’m listening.”
“Remember the summit I mentioned? The one the Ukrainian prime minister and the ambassador are attending.”
The fissure expanded. “Yes.”
“It’s the EaP Summit. The Eastern Partnership is an initiative of the European Union composed of leaders from the post-Soviet states.”
“I know about the EaP.”
“The purpose of the summit is to open up trade, develop economics strategies, and revisit travel policies with the EU. If the two entities reached an agreement, it will derail the Russians’ plan of reunifying the Soviet bloc as the Eurasian Union.”
“Where is it being held?”
“Gdánsk.”
Poland. And there you have it. “How many other leaders will be there?”
“The six foreign ministers in the EaP, and twenty-eight representatives from the EU countries. There will also be other top politicians there, like the ambassador. And since its Gdánsk in the summer, I’ll bet most of them brought their families.”
Thirty-four European and East European leaders. “This is all about the who, though.”
“It’s a big deal,” Lory said. “A yes vote cements a relationship between the EaP and the EU. Everyone expects it to pass. The signing is scheduled for sixteen hundred hours tomorrow afternoon.”
Jordan sat for a moment, contemplating the magnitude of damage the Russians could do. Someone needed to act.
“The first thing we need to do is find the long car and ascertain if the Russians are on that train,” she said. “Once we do that, we’ll have a better idea if Gdánsk is their target. It’s possible they’re headed to Kaliningrad.”
She was grasping at alternatives and knew it, but it made sense for them to take the weapon there. Kaliningrad sat smack dab in the center of the small Russian enclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania and served as a Russian naval air base and manufacturing city for trade between Russia and the EU. It was only two hundred kilometers from Gdánsk.
“We should be so lucky,” Lory said.
“Can we at least raise a red flag?”
“The ambassador has made it clear. He isn’t going to change his agenda or do anything to disrupt the signing without substantiated threats. Especially not one that involves the Russians. We need to find them, Jordan.”
“Then we need to get eyes on that train, sir.”
“I’ll pull the spy satellite images and forward them to you. Meanwhile I’ll send someone out to question the personnel at the train yard in Yares’ky and to reinterview the police officers involved in the chase. Somebody has to know something.”
“Someone on the ground had to be helping them,” she said. “What about alerting Krakow?”
“I’ll put in a call to my counterpart and have him send someone over to see if the train arrived with the long car still attached. You need to be ready to move on my orders.” Lory cleared his throat. “Our job is protecting the ambassador, Jordan. And now that means finding that weapon.”
Davis had been quiet, listening to the one-sided conversation. When she hung up, he waited for her to speak.
“Can your source pull photos of the area east of L’viv? We need to go as far east as Krakow.”
Jordan hadn’t given him all the details, and Davis hadn’t bought into her conspiracy theory. Not until they’d gone back to the hotel and spent the next few hours waiting for the images of the train to come in and digging up research on relations between China and Russia. What they’d pieced together was a frightening scenario that amounted to a geopolitical coup and cemented the theory that the Russians planned to attack the EaP Summit.
Proving the Russians and Deng Xue were working together was another story. The two countries were certainly friendly. The thaw began with President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow in 2013, and since then the relationship had only strengthened. Xi was a popular president, pushing for what he coined the “Chinese Dream,” not unlike the “American Dream.” But the Chinese Dream wasn’t about the individual, but about the collective lifestyle.
China and Russia needed each other. Trade was the cornerstone of Xi’s plan. Putin fantasized about opening a trade route to Germany. A Russia–China collaboration would allow for a network of new trade routes Xi called the “New Silk Roads,” but it all hinged on whether Putin succeeded in developing the Eurasian Union.
Seated cross-legged on the bed beside Davis, who was propped against the headboard, Jordan grabbed him by the arm to get his attention and pointed to the tablet. “Here’s the tie-in. You were right, it’s all about money.”
Davis scooted up to listen.
“If Putin had succeeded in pulling together the former Soviet bloc countries, the EU would be signing an agreement to open trade with the Eurasian Union, not the EaP.”
Davis closed the tablet and set it aside. “Or all this could be a coincidence, and the Russians could be headed for Kaliningrad. You said it yourself.”
“We both know that’s where they plan to end up, with a railgun strategically positioned near the mouth of the Baltic Sea. But they won’t go there before putting an end to an EaP and EU agreement.”
“Either way, it means the train went north.”
“Or possibly just the truck.”